


clockwork

by BlackSclera



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: ANOTHER WORK FROM 2 YEARS AGO?, Time Travel, a fic that nobody asked for, but probably not in the way you're thinking, o H WHAT S THIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 22:58:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15011261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackSclera/pseuds/BlackSclera
Summary: He made a promise that he vowed to fulfill even at the cost of his own life.





	clockwork

 

He made a promise that he vowed to fulfill even at the cost of his own life.

 

He considered it a way of repaying the man who had saved their - his and his mother's - life in an untimely accident despite knowing that in the man's eyes, he was a convenient little tool that he could make use of for his own benefit. It wasn't difficult; when it had happened, he thought that he was fortunate to be too young to even have doubted the man, to have realized that there was more to the accident than most people would think, to have seen the man in any light but their savior's.

 

He was 9 when he realized that the man had something to do with the accident.

 

Even then, however, there was nothing he could hate the man for. It was true that because of what the man had done, he had almost lost his mother and his life. It was also true that his mother could never speak or walk again. It was true that the house had to be sold in order to be able to pay for the treatment necessary. A lot of things were true, but the fact that the man had saved him was never going to be a lie.

 

He didn't ask, not yet he had told himself then. He was too young, too naive, too narrow-minded to have the courage or the determination to face whatever reason the man was going to throw at his face. The man wasn't kind. He was cruel and strong and scary and-

 

He was a good person.

 

The man had known this- his respect towards him that overcame even the terror of having known that he was responsible for making it so that his mother wouldn't be able to feel her legs or speak again. And he used it. He used that respect and loyalty he had earned by offering a home with a warm bed and warm food. He used it -  _kept on doing so_  - until he was satisfied. He  _abused_  it until he was battered and bruised and hardened to the point of being scarily brittle.

 

But he never broke.

 

 _You never fail to betray my expectations,_ the man had told him.

 

He didn't understand. He was only a child after all.

 

*

 

He was 10 when he had first taken a life. All 27 of them.

 

They wore black suits, a sight which the man had told him to learn to be familiar with and he almost wanted to ask how could he  _not_  when he was forced to take their lives with his very own hands? By the end of the night, he couldn't help but think how some people were lucky enough to use a gun, to use a knife, to use  _any weapon_  in order to take a life unlike him who had to kill with his very own hands. He didn't regret it, no, it was scary how he didn't. Instead, there was only pity for having had to in the first place. How these people were like him. How they didn't have a choice but to walk this path of self-destruction. It was an easy lesson to burn into his very head that those who choose this road never lived long. And even if they did, the person who ends up destroying them is nobody but themselves.

 

That was the Mafia, the man had said, looking at him with that look in his eyes as he had when he first saved him and his mother. Far too lacking of emotion but brimming and alight with disdainful desperation.

 

Perhaps it was because he watched so many lives fade from his hands that he understood what that look meant.

 

It wasn't him who needed the man. It was the other way around.

 

The man needed him.

 

Though slight, it became a little easier to breathe and how  _ironic_ was it to say that when he had just taken so many lives with his own hands? He was just a child, and there he was, stained with the blood of nameless people who had families of their own, with a dagger of promise pressed against his beating heart, marveling over the lucidity that washed over his mind.

 

That night, two things reigned his mind.

 

The fact that the man needed him, and why.

 

*

 

He was 14 when he first met Reborn.

 

With him, he brought the secret behind his heritage, the truth behind his father's absence, and the responsibility of having to make it so that he was to become fit to inherit Vongola. The man had warned him beforehand, told him this was going to happen, so he pretended to play the fool if not just to lure out as much information as he could.

 

The promise was loud against his ears, repeating itself over and over again even in the presence of the Sun Arcobaleno. It resonated with the promise of his claim over his inheritance.

 

He shouldn't be surprised to have found that when Reborn demanded to know where he was currently residing, the man was nowhere to be found.

 

"You live alone?" Reborn had asked.

 

He smiled at him and shook his head. Reborn didn't ask again.

 

_*_

 

 _You sure did as you pleased while I was away,_  were the man's first words when he appeared before him once again.

 

He didn't change at all in terms of appearance. He was still the same young man with the same dark knowledgeable eyes. But his lips were twisted into something like a wry smile that struck him as odd and familiar. It was weird because he's never seen it before.

 

He didn't apologize, he found no need to. The man knew this was going to happen, just like he always did, and if he didn't like it, he could have stopped him and done something more than just return with that -  _vulnerable_ \- look on his face.

 

Instead, he smiled back and pulled the ring dangling from a chain around his neck, showed it to him, and watched as the man regarded it with an amused look.

 

There was nothing to be said, only a promise to be fulfilled.

 

He was 15 and within himself were secrets that no one but he and the man who saved him when he was 6 knew. He was still the same person; the son of a woman who fell in love unsuspectingly with a man who was in the Mafia, the only valid successor of the most influential Famiglia, and the bearer of a promise who vowed to fulfill it even at the cost of his own life.

 

*

 

He woke up in a coffin, and he laughed.

 

He didn't doubt the man and what he had told him when he was a child; far from it, actually. He wasn't laughing because he couldn't contain the sardonic disbelief, no. He was laughing because this era wasn't meant to exist for him. His mere existence -  _the promise_ \- was what would set this world to its path of destruction and how he  _longed_  to be able to do just that. He had the strength to, had the reason to, had the  _right_ to.

 

But he mustn't. This time around, there will be no predecessors and trials.

 

All of a sudden, he stopped.

 

"Oh," he said, laughter and amusement gone. " _Oh._ "

 

 _You never fail to betray my expectations,_ the man had told him.

 

He didn't understand. He was only a child after all.

 

But now he did, and he wished he didn't.

 

*

 

At the final battle, it was made apparent that Byakuran knew who he was. And Yuni did, too.

 

How convenient was it for this Sky barrier to not only prove itself impenetrable but also soundproof unlike the last time?

 

"Let's cut the formalities, shall we?" Byakuran asked, sounding too solemn to be the very same man he once knew. "What are you doing here?"

 

He smiled. He had always struck him as flippant and childish but he supposed that even Byakuran had this side to him.

 

Yuni inhaled sharply, trembling from where she stood yet resolute to hear this conversation through. She might be a child, but she was still worthy of being called the holder of the Sky Pacifier.

 

"I can say the same to you," he replied, back turned to his friends and Reborn. A part of him didn't want them to know. "You know the outcome of this battle."

 

"Why?" Yuni asked. Maybe to address Byakuran's knowledge of the outcome or the fact that the outcome was known between them at all. "I don't really understand but why do I... feel like this has happened before?"

 

He looked at her, sees the very first holder of the Sky Pacifier in her eyes and disposition, and nodded.

 

"It has happened before."

 

Yuni's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

 

"You know the answer, Yuni," he said, gently taking the Vongola Sky Ring from his finger. "Byakuran doesn't just  _know_  this. He remembers it happening, and so do you."

 

It was unclear what was happening outside the barrier but they were evidently in a state of disarray, not with his guardians seemingly looking among themselves in apprehension and helpless devastation. No attacks can destroy the barrier; they didn't have the same strength as they had the last time they accomplished it.

 

"This isn't a parallel world," he revealed, "This is the same world where I have defeated Byakuran."

 

Byakuran himself didn't look all that assured by the revelation as much as Yuni who suddenly fell on her knees.

 

"..The only way for that to happen is…" Yuni whispered, drastically paling, "...is for this world to reset itself. This couldn't-  _shouldn't_  have happened- why? I made sure that…" She turned to face Byakuran. "Is that why you're here? Did you intend for this to happen from the very start?"

 

"I couldn't take the risk. This period of time was when development was crucial for them," Byakuran answered, gesturing towards his friends outside the barrier. "And this was also necessary because only the three of us know about this."

 

Byakuran turned to face him, conjuring a replica of the invisible hand that was large enough to crush his entire body in its grip. "And now that we're here, with no one to interrupt us… answer me. What are you doing here? Why is this happening?"

 

He met the enraged amethyst eyes with a smile on his lips. He couldn't help but remember the time when he had to kill people the same way, slowly tightening his hands around their necks and being forced to watch the life drain out of their eyes, cursing him with their very last breath.

 

"I," he rasped, seeing something more than anger in the man's eyes, "I have a promise to fulfill, Byakuran."

 

"...A promise?" Yuni fearfully echoed.

 

The Vongola ring he held loosely between his fingers fell to the ground when Byakuran tightened his grip and Yuni stopped breathing, only managing to grip Byakuran's wrist- a silent plea to stop.

 

The reason why was clear to everyone who had a pair of eyes to see with.

 

There, on the ground by his feet, was the shattered pieces of the ring, helplessly crushed into indistinguishable pieces.

 

Byakuran has seen it happen before. He's seen it so many times when he had chosen to destroy all seven of them with his own hands time and time again in order to rule every parallel world. But this was different. This was different from those times because they were-

 

They were  _hollow_. Empty, only meant to have lasted and served its purpose for as long as  _this_.

 

"I made a promise," he said again as one of the rings that served to fuel the barrier gradually disintegrated into nothingness before their very eyes. "I made a promise with the man who saved my life."

 

One by one, exclamations of the other six bearers of the Vongola ring were heard and Byakuran took a step back. Yuni shuddered, tears already gathering at the corner of her eyes. The Vongola rings- they were breaking.

 

No one asked why Byakuran willingly conceded his defeat. No one could bring themselves to speak as Yuni made the same decision as she had before in the past.

 

They left the future with a hundred questions and dawning realizations.

 

The most prominent of said realizations being that the tenth successor was keeping a lot of things to himself.

 

*

 

It was quite a while before Reborn mustered the courage to ask what most have been failing to.

 

"What promise did you make?"

 

His student looked at him from where he was answering one of the tests that Reborn had made while strapped to an explosive that would go off at every wrong answer in his room while the others went about their business in the house. He didn't answer for a while.

 

"To protect the rings," he answered almost to himself and Reborn glared.

 

 _They were destroyed_ , he must have been thinking.  _What the fuck are you talking about?_

 

All things considered, it was probably about time he told Reborn.

 

"Were they, really?" he asked, tone hinting to look between the lines. "Those were fakes. It isn't impossible since you pulled the same trick on Varia."

 

Reborn grimaced.

 

"What, are you telling me that the real rings are somewhere else and-"

 

His student smiled. "And if they are?"

 

The Sun Arcobaleno froze and he grabbed him by the front of his shirt, dragging him down so that he was on the floor, held captive by the infant's strong grip and his dark eyes.

 

" _Who was it?_ " he growled, " _Who did you make that promise with?"_

 

One word left his lips and it was all that was needed for Reborn to understand.

 

"Checkerface."

 

*

 

Ah, he was dying.

 

Three bullets to his chest and no amount of Sun Flames will be able to help him at this point.

 

He could hear them screaming, telling him to stay awake and stay with them while they frantically tried to stop the bleeding. Unfortunate that Ryohei wasn't with them in this mission.

 

He would heave a sigh if he could but all that came out is agonized hacking. The panic in their muffled voices increased.

 

He wanted to roll his eyes.

 

There was no use; people in this line of work tended to die early. He already learned that at the age of 10. There were worst ways to go about his death and this seemed a pretty appropriate point of time to die.

 

He fleetingly thought that he wished he could've seen the man again. The last time they met was when he showed him the hollow ring in his possession.

 

He closed his eyes, too tired to make them stay open. There wasn't much to see but blurred colors, anyway.

 

"Not yet."

 

He blinked.

 

"Not yet. You haven't fulfilled the promise."

 

The man's face hovered closely over his own and he suppressed the bitter laughter threatening to bubble from his throat. In his hand was the stone that represented the Vongola rings in another world, whole, bright and colorful, gently being placed into his own, merging with his skin.

 

 _Ah,_ he thought, wistful,  _So that's what happened._

 

He let a wry smile overtake his features and when he awoke, he was a child once more, with his mother in his arms.

 

He had lied when he said he first killed a man when he was 10.

 

He was 6, and his first victim was his mother.

 

The voiceless woman whose legs she couldn't feel was merely a sacrifice to fit someone's role.

 

 _Again_ , Checkerface whispered.  _Fulfill the promise._

 

Cruel and unkind.

 

_Protect the Vongola Rings._

 

And this time, he knows he isn't a good person, and he never will be.

 

But a promise was a promise.

 

*

 

_When he and Sepira were the only two remaining members and unable to provide the Tri-ni-set with their own powers, they decided to split the Tri-ni-set into another two sets of seven stones: Vongola Rings and Mare Rings. Arcobaleno Pacifiers and Vongola Rings were given to the humans and Mare Rings kept by Sepira and her Famiglia._

 

_It holds true, ten generations later, except for one._

 

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly cant remember how this fic came to be but im pretty sure 2yrsago!me thought itd be cool if Tsuna has become the vessel of the stones


End file.
